“Like a lily among the thorns,
so is my love among the maidens.
[…] My beloved is mine and I am his;
he pastures among the lilies.”
[Songs 2:2 & 16]
In chapter two of the Song of Solomon the Beloved compares his Love to a lily among thorns. The language of the Vulgate, owing a bit to the idioms of Latin, is a bit stronger: lilium inter spinas. She is a lily set in a nest of spines. One cannot get at her without getting into the spines. Towards the end of the chapter the Lover says of her Beloved that they belong each to the other and that he willingly pastures, or “browses”, among the lilies which means also among the thorns.
What’s going-on? Why make this comparison? What’s more —what do the lovers of the Song mean by this?
Here I offer a brief quadriga-informed reading:
I.
On what is called “the literal level,” we can understand these as clearly intertextual scriptural allusions: She is like the flowering capitals which crown the pillars of the Temple (1 Kings 7:15-22). She is like the rim of the great bronze basin in the court (1 Kings 7:23-26). She is the crowning glory, the blossom at the zenith of who he is, the flowering well of his life. She is a sanctuary-ified Eden. She is also like Eve, who Adam names a second time after the Fall upon hearing the Lord’s promise to her —that the Seed of the Woman would crush the serpent (Gen 3:15). Eve means “Mother of the Living” (Gen. 3:20).
And yet, for all this, their romance still wears signs of the Fall: thorns stand round about her. We are right to think of the thorns of Adam’s curse (Gen. 3:18). To dive into the brambles to savor the Lily is to touch the thorns. It is in fact, to become crowned by them, like the ram who took the place of Isaac (Gen. 22:13).
The picture, on a literal level is a meaningful one: each suffers the wounds of love. She suffers the thorns which pierce her as she extends in love for the Beloved. And he suffers the spines lacerations as he presses-in to delight in her.
Andreas Capellanus in his “Art of Courtly Love” describes the way in which love can be understood as an inborn willingness to suffer for the sake of the beloved one. Those who have loved know this to be true.
II.
We can move easily into what is called “the typological level” from here. Christ is the Beloved who reaches for the Lily among the thorns and in so doing crowns himself with them (Matt 27:29; Jn 19:2). It is not out of some impersonal sense of Kantian obligation he lays-down his life for the world, it is, rather, “for the joy that was set before him” (Heb. 12:2).
The Bride, the Church, also endures the pain of the thorns. Jean-Baptiste-Elie Avrillon offers this gloss: The celestial spouse “must therefore love and suffer at one and the same time […] when the wind sways the thorns, they pierce the lily on every side, but how does this flower revenge herself for so many wrongs? It is by turning her wounds into so many mouths, from which she breathes forth a sweet perfume…”
To paraphrase: Divine Love calls us to bear the wounds of the thorns in which we are set; each place in which we are pierced creates a new set of lips which sing the praises of the Beloved who gave his Life for us. Thus can Paul say, for one example among many, “ rejoice in my sufferings” (Rom. 5:3).
Paul is uninterested in merely white-knuckling through the sorrows of the Gospel in order to enjoy the benefits of salvation. No, the thorns are among the things in which Paul finds sweet communion with Jesus “I want to know Him, and the power of his Resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being confirmed in his death” (Phil. 3:10).
III.
“Tropology” means how the typology applies to the life of the church. Here’s one application (I’m sure there are others): You, beloved, are a lily among thorns. You have hardships, and sorrows, and tears, and difficulties. You have been pierced. Comparing your wounds with the wounds of others is not the point. It is enough that you have sorrow. The Living God browses among the thorns and lilies of your life. The things that pierce you pierce him too. Sing those sorrows. Find in each wound a new set of lips with which to sing the Redeemer’s praise. Tune your wounds to the music of the Gospel of the Beloved.
When David says that tears have been his bread (Ps. 42), he is making more than a poetic gloss on his painful moments. He is alluding to the show-bread, the communion bread of the tabernacle which the priests gave him to eat in times of trial in communion with the living God (1 Sam 21:3-6). His sad moments, his sorrows have become like that: communion meals with the God of Jacob —moments of intimacy and comfort.
So also our wounds, in the Body of Jesus, become productive of praise. They become a part of the sweet aroma that the Lover will, in the end of the Song, pour out on her Beloved (Songs 7:13).
It is not just that Jesus has sorrows like me, though that is true too. It is, more deeply, that my sorrows, like His, are not “unto death” but are “unto the glory of God” (cf. Jn. 11:4).
Sing your sorrows.